Chasing a man wanted for 'assault dangerous weapon, shoe'
21.05.12
Even when you get a lot of space for a story, you often are forced to leave some choice anecdotes on the cutting room floor. That’s what happened to me when writing a 3,000-word story about a deputy U.S. Marshal who spends his day hunting fugitives.
I trailed Deputy Willard King, who works in the District and is one of 3,500 deputies nationwide, over three months as he criss-crossed the region in pursuit of “bandits,” the term he and other deputies use to describe fugitives.
For story-telling purposes, I focused on just one of those shifts, forcing me to cut some enlightening scenes I wish I could have somehow shoe-horned into the story. Here are two.
On a frigid January morning, I was hanging out with King in his stale-smelling Ford as he staked out a Waldorf townhouse while on the hunt for a stripper. Wanted for failing to appear at a D.C. Superior Court hearing, she was charged with driving over her ex-boyfriend’s new squeeze. She was also accused of stabbing her boyfriend 27 times, possibly in self-defense.
Source: Washington Post (blog)